We can justify a concern with the environment. Our getting pleasure depends on it. And, more important, our well-being depends on it. In so far as we are concerned with the long-term good of human beings, we have reason to care about the world around us, both instrumentally, in that it offers resources or commodities that we can use to further our good, and non-instrumentally, in that we can and should value certain of its aspects for their immediate relation to our well-being. The environment matters. Many environmental problems could be solved and its overall quality much improved if, for short-term and local concerns with pleasure, profit and material goods, we substituted a broader and longer-term perspective, focusing not on ourselves and our immediate wants, but on people in general, and their deeper needs. Perhaps we can have videos, cars and food, but human beings cannot flourish in a denatured and impoverished world.

So far, some good. But what is still missing, and some would say is obviously missing, is any direct concern for the well-being of anything other than human beings. We may be able to explain why we should care about the health of lapwings, or the conservation of fish or forests, or the preservation of national parks, or the state of the ozone layer, or the diversity of insect and plant life, all from a human point of view. Our well-being will suffer if we don't.